Family Offended for Not being invited

Hi Tayy! Welcome to the WeddingWire Community! Also, congrats on your recent marriage! Share pics if you'd like! I know you might feel a little disappointed in everyone's reaction, but I wouldn't allow it to consume you. You did what was best for you. There are numerous close family weddings that I was not invited to, and I understood; not everyone has the ability to host a large number of people. Since you've already sincerely explained why you were unable to invite everyone, I would just relax and not worry too much about the reactions. I hope you're able to work through this. Hang in there!

Sorry you went through all that. What's done is done, and all you can do is try to rebuild relationships with the people who are hurt. I would just explain that it was necessary to keep it really slow.

If you could go back and do it again, I would advise you to resist the pressure to add the other "extras" your family pushed on you. How could you let your mom bring friends but leave out grandparents (from their point of view)? Especially when some are included but others not. Try to understand why they are hurt. If you can, go to dinner with them and try to spend some extra quality time.

Yea that really stinks, but I can deff see why they are upset. I know you didn't mean for any of it to happen but your mom really put you in a bad situation. Honestly both sides of your family deserved to get invited if either were going to, of course they feel left out. Maybe you can try to have another small party with your fathers side of the family that was not invited to the actual wedding?

The first time I got married it was just us, parents, siblings, an aunt who lived 10 minutes from the church, my uncle who took pictures and my grandparents and 1 close friend each. My mom is 1 of 7 and my dad is 1 of 5 and most of my aunts and uncles have at least 2 kids so it's a big family. We caught all kinds of crap for not inviting every single aunt/uncle/cousin. We had 2 weeks to plan the wedding and had just graduated from college with no real jobs yet outside of servers at restaurants so a large wedding was absolutely not going to happen. We passed out announcements at Christmas(we got married 1/2/07) just to let people know we got engaged and were getting married in hopes that they'd be happy for us. Anyone that wasn't coming just looked us at like ok great and didn't say anything nice. It sucked. None of them understood that we couldn't afford a big wedding. It was out of the norm in my family to not invite everyone to a big wedding but everyone else had parents with $$ to pay for a big wedding or had the means to do it themselves. I even had friends that were upset they weren't invited even though we saw each other maybe once a year.

There will always be people who are mad they weren't invited. They don't get it. This time around we invited more people and we are still running into people who are hinting at trying to get invited. We have a cap at 35 and it's a DW so we had to be selective. I don't explain to people why they aren't invited. I just brush it off. You shouldn't have to explain and people shouldn't be asking why they didn't get to go.

I got married seven years ago. Seven. My husband and I eloped. We invited *no family* whatsoever. We were off at a race and our team mates did attend because they *happened* to be there.

To announce it, we sent every woman on both sides of the family an orchid plant with the message that we were getting married and wanted to share our joy and that we would have a big party when we got back. My parents were thrilled. His side of the family? Threw a fit. Everyone told us that if we had a party? They would not come.
We got over it. Last night. SEVEN years later. After I'm thinking that at least my MIL has finally started coming around (my husband has two adult children ... and the youngest has been hateful to me for 10 years now) ... well, obviously not. Out of the blue, she calls my husband and goes on and on and on about how hurt all of the women on his side are STILL about not being invited to our wedding. He was gobsmacked.
So - you just have to decide it is what it is. And if someone is going to be butt hurt over it? That's their problem and not yours. Because I never in my wildest imagination thought that this would go on for this long. They are going to take it to the grave with them.

I know the feeling, but you cannot make everyone happy. You seem like a kind soul. If they love you, they will understand, If not then they will live another day to be bitter. and to the bitter family: